In recent years, heavy-duty shears have come into use for cutting I-beams, heavy steel pipes, steel columns and girders, all for the purpose of reducing such steel to be recycled through a steel mill for further use. Typically such heavy-duty shears are used in demolishing buildings and other structures by cutting the columns and girders and also shearing reinforcing rods used in poured concrete for strengthening the concrete structure. Also such shears have been widely used in scrap yards for simply reducing the size of scrap steel for recycling. Such scrap steel may be in a wide variety of forms, including girders, I-beams, columns and pipes. Shears that have previously been known have been somewhat usable for shearing some plate-like structures, such as the paneling used in railroad boxcars. However, previously known equipment has had considerable difficulty in efficiently cutting steel plate and reducing it to a size to be efficiently handled and loaded into containers to be shipped back to the steel mills.